Subjects:

For the PET Writing Exam, question 8 requires the student to write a short story, containing about 100 words.
For this question, the student needs to do 4 things.

The first thing is to tell the reader the who, where, why and when of the story.
This might sound a lot but it can be done very easily.
'Last summer my brother and his girlfriend went to Spain to celebrate his birthday.'

This short sentence tells us WHO, WHERE, WHEN and WHY.
It is extremely important to put the story into context before telling the story.

The second thing that needs to be done is to create a simple problem.
A simple problem is one that can be easily solved.
'My father lost the car keys.'

The third thing to do is to solve the simple problem created.
'Luckily my mother had a spare set of keys.'

The final thing to do is to give the story a happy ending.
Again, this doesn't need many words.
'They all managed to get to the party'

The problem with writing a story for this PET exam is that you only have 100 words to do everything, so it is important to keep things short.

Finally, the exam question gives the first line, or sometimes the last line, of the story to be written, so the story needs to work with the line given.

Lets look at an example:



Lets start with:
'Jo looked at the map and decided to go left.'

Then to add some context:
'He was on holiday in Spain with his girlfriend Louise to celebrate his birthday, and they were driving around the country to do some sightseeing.'

Now for the problem:
'Suddenly he had a puncture and the car started shaking, so he had to stop the car quickly and get out to have a look.'

Then the problem has to be solved.
'He spent the next half an hour changing the wheel, which was very difficult.'

Finally for the happy ending:
'Once the wheel had been changed, they carried on with their journey to the party they had arranged to celebrate his birthday with all his friends.'

Putting all this together to give the finished story as a model answer:

Jo looked at the map and decided to go left. He was on holiday in Spain with his girlfriend Louise to celebrate his birthday, and they were driving around the country to do some sightseeing. Suddenly he had a puncture and the car started shaking, so he had to stop the car quickly and get out to have a look. He spent the next half an hour changing the wheel, which was very difficult. Once the wheel had been changed, they carried on with their journey to the party they had arranged to celebrate his birthday with all his friends.

Good presentation can improve your mark, so the individual parts should be separated by leaving a line between them:

Jo looked at the map and decided to go left. He was on holiday in Spain with his girlfriend Louise to celebrate his birthday, and they were driving around the country to do some sightseeing.

Suddenly he had a puncture and the car started shaking, so he had to stop the car quickly and get out to have a look. He spent the next half an hour changing the wheel, which was very difficult.

Once the wheel had been changed, they carried on with their journey to the party they had arranged to celebrate his birthday with all his friends.

This story contains 100 words.